What version of javac built my jar?

Question

How can I tell what version of the Java compiler was used to build a jar? I have a jar file, and it could have been built in any one of three JDKs. We need to know exactly

Answer 1

On Windows do the following:

1. Unzip or extract the JAR file using WinZip / Java JAR command.
2. Drag and Drop one of the class files into your Eclipse Java project.
3. Open the class file.

Now Eclipse will show the exact major and minor version.

Answer 2

Since I needed to analyze fat jars I was interested in the version of each individual class in a jar file. Therefore I took Joe Liversedge approach https://stackoverflow.com/a/27877215/1497139 and combined it with David J. Liszewski' https://stackoverflow.com/a/3313839/1497139 class number version table to create a bash script jarv to show the versions of all class files in a jar file.

usage

usage: ./jarv jarfile
 -h|--help: show this usage

Example

jarv $Home/.m2/repository/log4j/log4j/1.2.17/log4j-1.2.17.jar

java 1.4 org.apache.log4j.Appender
java 1.4 org.apache.log4j.AppenderSkeleton
java 1.4 org.apache.log4j.AsyncAppender$DiscardSummary
java 1.4 org.apache.log4j.AsyncAppender$Dispatcher
...

Bash script jarv

#!/bin/bash
# WF 2018-07-12
# find out the class versions with in jar file
# see https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3313532/what-version-of-javac-built-my-jar

# uncomment do debug
# set -x

#ansi colors
#http://www.csc.uvic.ca/~sae/seng265/fall04/tips/s265s047-tips/bash-using-colors.html
blue='\033[0;34m'  
red='\033[0;31m'  
green='\033[0;32m' # '\e[1;32m' is too bright for white bg.
endColor='\033[0m'

#
# a colored message 
#   params:
#     1: l_color - the color of the message
#     2: l_msg - the message to display
#
color_msg() {
  local l_color="$1"
  local l_msg="$2"
  echo -e "${l_color}$l_msg${endColor}"
}

#
# error
#
#   show an error message and exit
#
#   params:
#     1: l_msg - the message to display
error() {
  local l_msg="$1"
  # use ansi red for error
  color_msg $red "Error: $l_msg" 1>&2
  exit 1
}

#
# show the usage
#
usage() {
  echo "usage: $0 jarfile"
  # -h|--help|usage|show this usage
  echo " -h|--help: show this usage"
  exit 1 
}

#
# showclassversions
#
showclassversions() {
  local l_jar="$1"
  jar -tf "$l_jar" | grep '.class' | while read classname
  do
    class=$(echo $classname | sed -e 's/\.class$//')
    class_version=$(javap -classpath "$l_jar" -verbose $class | grep 'major version' | cut -f2 -d ":" | cut -c2-)
    class_pretty=$(echo $class | sed -e 's#/#.#g')
    case $class_version in
      45.3) java_version="java 1.1";;
      46) java_version="java 1.2";;
      47) java_version="java 1.3";;
      48) java_version="java 1.4";;
      49) java_version="java5";;
      50) java_version="java6";;
      51) java_version="java7";;
      52) java_version="java8";;
      53) java_version="java9";;
      54) java_version="java10";;
      *) java_version="x${class_version}x";;
    esac
    echo $java_version $class_pretty
  done
}

# check the number of parameters
if [ $# -lt 1 ]
then
  usage
fi

# start of script
# check arguments
while test $# -gt 0
do
  case $1 in
    # -h|--help|usage|show this usage
    -h|--help) 
      usage
      exit 1
      ;;
    *)
     showclassversions "$1"
  esac
  shift
done 

Answer 3

You can easily do this on command line using following process :

If you know any of the class name in jar, you can use following command :

javap -cp jarname.jar -verbose packagename.classname | findstr major

example :

    C:\pathwherejarlocated> javap -cp jackson-databind-2.8.6.jar -verbose com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.JsonMappingException | findstr major

Output :

    major version: 51

Quick Reference :

JDK 1.0 — major version 45 
DK 1.1 — major version 45 
JDK 1.2 — major version 46 
JDK 1.3 — major version 47 
JDK 1.4 — major version 48 
JDK 1.5 — major version 49 
JDK 1.6 — major version 50 
JDK 1.7 — major version 51 
JDK 1.8 — major version 52 
JDK 1.9 — major version 53 

PS : if you dont know any of the classname, you can easily do this by using any of the jar decompilers or by simply using following command to extract jar file :

jar xf myFile.jar

Answer 4

I as well wrote my own bash script to dump the Java version required by all the jars passed at the command line... Mine is a bit rough, but works for me ;-)

example usage

$ jar_dump_version_of_jvm_required.sh *.jar
JVM VERSION REQUIRED: 46.0, /private/tmp/jars/WEB-INF/lib/json-simple-1.1.jar
JVM VERSION REQUIRED: 49.0, /private/tmp/jars/WEB-INF/lib/json-smart-1.1.1.jar
JVM VERSION REQUIRED: 50.0, /private/tmp/jars/WEB-INF/lib/jsontoken-1.0.jar
JVM VERSION REQUIRED: 50.0, /private/tmp/jars/WEB-INF/lib/jsr166y-1.7.0.jar

jar_dump_version_of_jvm_required.sh

#!/bin/bash

DIR=$(PWD)
function show_help()
{
  ME=$(basename $0)
  IT=$(cat <<EOF

  Dumps the version of the JVM required to run the classes in a jar file

  usage: $ME JAR_FILE

  e.g. 

  $ME myFile.jar    ->  VERSION: 50.0     myFile.jar

  Java versions are:
  54 = Java 10
  53 = Java 9
  52 = Java 8
  51 = Java 7
  50 = Java 6
  49 = Java 5
  48 = Java 1.4
  47 = Java 1.3
  46 = Java 1.2
  45.3 = Java 1.1

EOF
  )
  echo "$IT"
  exit
}

if [ "$1" == "help" ]
then
  show_help
fi
if [ -z "$1" ]
then
  show_help
fi

function unzipJarToTmp()
{
  JAR=$1
  CLASS_FILE=$(jar -tf "$JAR" | grep \.class$ | grep -v '\$' | head -n1 | awk '{print $NF}')
  OUT_FILE="$CLASS_FILE"
  #echo "J=$JAR C=$CLASS_FILE O=$OUT_FILE"
  jar xf "$JAR" "$CLASS_FILE"

  MAJOR=$(javap -v "$OUT_FILE" 2>&1 | grep major | awk -F' ' '{print $3'})
  MINOR=$(javap -v "$OUT_FILE" 2>&1 | grep minor | awk -F' ' '{print $3'})
  if [ -z "$MAJOR" ]
  then
    echo "JVM VERSION REQUIRED: NA as no classes in $JAR"
  else
    echo "JVM VERSION REQUIRED: $MAJOR.$MINOR, $JAR"
  fi
}

# loop over cmd line args
for JAR in "$@"
do
  cd "$DIR"
  JAR_UID=$(basename "$JAR" | sed s/.jar//g)
  TMPDIR=/tmp/jar_dump/$JAR_UID/
  mkdir -p "$TMPDIR"
  JAR_ABS_PATH=$(realpath $JAR)

  cd "$TMPDIR"

  #echo "$JAR_ABS_PATH"
  unzipJarToTmp "$JAR_ABS_PATH"
  #sleep 2
done

Answer 5

To expand on Jonathon Faust's and McDowell's answers: If you're on a *nix based system, you can use od (one of the earliest Unix programs¹ which should be available practically everywhere) to query the .class file on a binary level:

od -An -j7 -N1 -t dC SomeClassFile.class

This will output the familiar integer values, e.g. 50 for Java 5, 51 for Java 6 and so on.

¹ Quote from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Od_(Unix)

Answer 6

A good deal of times, you might be looking at whole jar files, or war files that contain many jar files in addition to themselves.

Because I didn't want to hand check each class, I wrote a java program to do that:

https://github.com/Nthalk/WhatJDK

./whatjdk some.war
some.war:WEB-INF/lib/xml-apis-1.4.01.jar contains classes compatible with Java1.1
some.war contains classes compatible with Java1.6

While this doesn't say what the class was compiled WITH, it determines what JDK's will be able to LOAD the classes, which is probably what you wanted to begin with.